


Intruders

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, M/M, Meet-Ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 03:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16756891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He used to be good at organizing and executing shit so far above brewing a cup of coffee in the morning. He used to be a Sergeant and he used to have people relying on him and now he can’t even gather the energy and focus for this one simple task.He ponders whether it’s really worth it to be out of bed. He is starting to lean towards ‘not’.Maybe if he falls asleep, he can skip to tomorrow. Restart. Maybe he’ll have a good morning then.He raises from the couch, turns towards the bed-It’s 8:46 and someone rings his doorbell. Bucky freezes.x-x-x“Hey,” says the beefy blond, whose sunny smile falters as he takes on Bucky’s disheveled state. His eyes flicker to the apartment, and Bucky closes the door few inches to shield the view.Fucking Mondays, and missing socks, and messy apartments, and unfairly attractive dudes appearing at his doorstep to rub it in how miserable and pathetic and disgusting Bucky’s whole life is.“We are here to change the thermostats,” the black guy says.





	Intruders

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Lots of talk about uglier sides of depression/anxiety - Bucky and Bucky's home is in gross state. Depression, PTSD, anxieties, intrusive obsessive thoughts, negligent care of self (including eating). Bucky's internal monologue delves sometimes into self-loathing, especially in first chapter.

It’s 8:12 AM and Bucky is _tired._

 

He is sitting on his couch, with his elbows on his knees and a mug of coffee in his hands. It’s Monday, and he can hear people in the hallway outside his apartment.

 

The sounds remind him uncomfortably of how _he_ hasn’t been out of his apartment for three days and how today he probably won’t either. It’s a bad morning, with brain fog numbing his mind and exhaustion crippling his muscles and a big void inside him where his motivation and perseverance should lie. His bad mornings rarely turn into good days. Usually they just turn into a day full of blanking and zoning out, or getting lost in the memories.

 

He feels more like a zombie than a human, so the last thing he wants to do is to listen to any chit chat between his neighbors or people rushing to work or whatever else goes out there in the world so _normal_ and so close, yet so impossibly far away. He tunes the sounds out.

 

He takes a sip of coffee and immediately spits it back into the mug. Cold. He realizes he hasn’t actually brewed new coffee yet this morning and it’s just the remains from yesterday.

 

He _should_ get up and go brew new coffee. He _should_ make some breakfast. Go to shower. Brush his hair. Brush his teeth. Put clothes on. Start the day. Get the ball rolling.

 

He is so tired. Even thinking about all of those steps makes him want to crawl back to bed. Why is everything so difficult.

 

He looks down at his mug. The kitchen is so far away. He starts to compile a list of tasks required to get a fresh mug of coffee (get up; go to kitchen; wash a mug…), and wants to cry when his mind tries to wander away, overwhelmed already and just so tired. Keeping his thoughts straight and on the mission this complex feels impossible.

 

He wants to cry. He used to be _smart._ He used to be good at organizing and executing shit so far above _brewing a cup of coffee in the morning._ He used to be a Sergeant and he used to have people relying on him and now _he can’t even gather the energy and focus for this one simple task._

 

Fuck Mondays and fuck coffee and fuck _everything._

 

He ponders whether it’s really worth it to be out of bed. He is starting to lean towards ‘not’. In bed there is a good chance of falling asleep, which sounds preferable to a day spent blanking on couch.

 

Maybe if he falls asleep, he can skip to tomorrow. Restart. Maybe he’ll have a good morning then.

 

He raises from the couch, turns towards the bed-

 

It’s 8:46 and someone rings his doorbell. Bucky _freezes._

 

x-x-x

 

The thing is: Bucky used to love visitors.

 

When he moved away from his parents to his own place, it surprised him how deafening the silence could get. He had grown up in a big, loud family, and he had craved his own space and calm quiet.

 

Of course, as is often the case in life, he had only craved it until he actually got it.

 

After the first night of almost claustrophobic _loneliness_ , he did his best to have people around as often as possible. He invited his sisters around, as well as all of his friends. Heck, he even invited around some of his neighbours, to share food or watch the baseball matches together. That year after moving to his own place and before joining the army was full of people sleeping on his couch and movie nights. Full of laughter.

 

Then… after...

 

It wasn’t so bad _at first._ Couple of Commandos invited themselves to Bucky’s place during the first month he was off the hospital, and it wasn’t _too bad._ It was uncomfortable, Bucky felt awkward and broken and so horribly aware of how different it was to _before_ \- how the silences were long and weighted. How _he_ was different, how he fiddled and flinched away. How he was relieved that they left him alone, and how _they_ were relieved, getting away from having to see him like that.

 

Okay, yeah, it had been bad. But it hadn’t been _too bad._

 

After that, as the winter turned to spring and then to summer, and after he had drifted away from Commandos, after brushing away them again and again, it got harder and harder to get out of the bed. It was hard to care about himself or the apartment. Slowly and insidiously the inertia creeped in.

 

He used to be proud of his home. He used to take care of his surroundings, effortlessly and without extra thought. Normal things. Take out the trash. Vacuum once a week. Wash the dishes.

 

 _Living_ used to be no brainer. It used to come to him naturally. Easily.

 

x-x-x

 

It’s 8:48 and someone rings his doorbell again, loud and long.

 

Bucky is frozen, staring at the door. He has broken into cold sweat.

 

Who is it? What do they want? He hasn’t forgotten any bills nor the rent. He is pretty sure about it. He is relatively good at keeping on top of things like that on his good days.

 

He wants to ignore it. He wants to ignore it so bad. But what if it’s the janitor again, and he’s on legitimate business and is going to let himself in if Bucky doesn’t open the door?

 

He doesn’t want the same awkwardness to happen again as the last time. Not only it’s awkward to have people barge inside the apartment after ignoring them, he is just as naked as he was then.

 

“Moment,” Bucky shouts, his voice cracking from the disuse.

 

His heart is racing from the shock and adrenaline. He grabs a sweaty hoodie that should have been washed weeks ago and sweatpants stained with ketchup (plus something he can’t identify).

 

His toenails are long and dirty, which he hasn’t noticed nor let bother him in the past week or longer, but which is _really_ bothering him now that he did notice them and he is only a minute or two away from having to face an actual another human being face-to-face, but he can’t see any goddamn socks anywhere.

 

The doorbell rings again. Fuck it. At least he isn’t naked.

 

He opens the door, and wants to slam it shut again. It’s not the janitor or any of his neighbours or even a salesman.

 

It’s two guys around his age, both in overalls, with tool boxes waiting on the floor, and disarming smiles on their unfairly attractive, shaved, and clean faces.

 

Shoes, Bucky thinks hysterically. He could have put on _shoes._ Why didn’t he think of shoes?

 

“Hey,” says the beefy blond, whose sunny smile falters as he takes on Bucky’s disheveled state. His eyes flicker to the apartment, and Bucky closes the door few inches to shield the view.

 

Fucking Mondays, and missing socks, and messy apartments, and unfairly attractive dudes appearing at his doorstep to rub it in how miserable and pathetic and disgusting Bucky’s whole life is.

 

“We are here to change the thermostats,” the black guy says.

 

No. No no no. They want to get inside his apartment.

 

“There hasn’t been any notice for that,” Bucky says. It comes out snappishly. They probably don’t deserve it, but fuck, Bucky is starting to _panic._

 

The janitor checked the thermostats on that awkward visit few months ago and told that they would be changed to new ones in the autumn, and okay yeah Bucky had forgotten that was coming, but anyway he had _assumed_ that something like that would warrant a notice ahead of time.

 

The blond guy glances down. Bucky follows his eyes.

 

Bucky is standing in the middle of (and on top of) a chaotic, scattered pile of advertising leaflets and random papers.

 

Yeah, he can see how it looks like a pile that _could_ potentially hide an unnoticed notice for upcoming repairs, but despite how it looks, he _does_ actually check the top of the pile at least a couple times a week for bills or anything else important. So what if it’s too much of an effort to gather the rest away more often than once in a few months? Despite how it looks, he _would_ have noticed if there had been a notice for this.

 

Bucky sets his jaw and looks up. He wants to tell them to fuck off and slam the door in their face.

 

Instead, he gathers his dignity and says firmly, “Can you come back here a bit later? I’ll, um,” he flounders, and waves his hand a bit (and notices his fingernails are long and disgusting as well), trying to convey _‘I gotta clear the paths to radiators so you dudes can actually do your job in this pigsty’_ without actually needing to say it aloud.

 

“Of course,” says the black guy, nodding fervently with a too wide smile.

 

Bucky pulls his lips into a smile and nods at them both, and shuts the door.

 

He should have thanked them. Or said something, anything, before just slamming the door.

 

Well, too late now for manners.

 

He stands there, his trembling hand still on the door handle, while he listens how the guys move on to the next door and ring the bell.

 

He realizes his whole body is shaking. He is shaking worse than he did after many of his missions in _an actual war,_ and it’s so absurd that he starts to _laugh._

 

Sergeant Barnes, sweating and panicking over a couple of civilians wanting to come in to change his old shitty thermostats to new ones. What is his life.

 

His laughing stops abruptly when he realizes that he has no idea how long the changing of thermostats will take. Will the guys come straight back after finishing at his neighbour’s? They might.

 

‘Later’. Why didn’t he ask for them to come back in few hours? Or to come back to his place after everyone else’s? ‘Later’ is way too vague. They might be back at his door in ten minutes, or in three hours, but either way he has to be ready for the first option.

 

He looks down at his feet, and at the pile of papers. Right. He might as well start from here. He isn’t going to force the guys to parkour in his apartment, or crack their skulls after slipping on his trash. That would be so embarrassing.

 

He goes to the kitchen to get trash bags.

 

There’s nothing to do about the dishes piled on kitchen counter and on top of the stove - they aren’t priority plus there’s no way he could wash them away in time anyway - but he opens the window to let some fresh air in before grabbing the trash bags.

 

 _Mission ‘Clean Up the Base’ is on._ He knows he is still running on the aftermath of the shock and on the adrenaline, and hell yes he is going to take advance of that. His place may be a pigsty, and fuck what those guys think, but he is going to do his goddamn _best_ to clear up as well as he can before he has to let them in.

 

He might be an empty depressed shell, but he has his pride left.

 

...honestly, he _is_ shocked to find that he does have it left. That it’s flaring inside him now, and that it’s so humiliating to think about those guys coming back and stepping inside his home and _seeing_ and _judging him._

 

It’s most emotion he has felt for goddamn _months._ He embraces it. It has already lead him to do a lot more than he had planned to do today. (Open his door; Talk to strangers; Put clothes on; Let fresh air in; Actually even consider cleaning up.)

 

He gathers the papers in the bags (and ha, there _isn’t_ anything about the thermostats, he knew it) and looks around for the empty spot to put them on. There’s already a few smelly trash bags in his foyer that have been waiting for him to take them out.

 

He _should_ take them out now. But what if the guys come back while he is outside? (Good excuse. No need to think about the fact that he hasn’t been able to get out of the apartment during the daylight time for _weeks,_ and that’s the real obstacle here.)

 

His own nose has grown accustomed to the smell of his apartment that must be there, but he doesn’t think that opening windows is enough to get rid of all of the smell in time. He drags all the trash bags, including the ones with the just cleared up papers, inside the bathroom, and closes the door. That should help at least a little.

 

What if the guys need to use the bathroom?

 

Fuck.

 

It would be horrible if either of them opened the door and found the bathroom floor filled with trash bags. Also, the smell.

 

But. If he leaves the bags in the foyer, the guys will with 100% certainty walk past them and have to endure the smell. Whereas, it’s only _a possibility_ that either of them has to use Bucky’s bathroom.

 

Also. Frankly. They probably will _not_ want to use his bathroom, and will do their best to avoid going in, probably already (accurately) expecting it to be filthy based on rest of the apartment.

 

(A memory rushes in, sharp and bright and painful and something that feels like it’s from a century ago. _Beth, practicing how to change bathroom lights in Bucky’s bathroom, so she’ll know when she’d move into her own place one day. Beth, teasing him about his shampoos and conditioners and skin care products and his vanity, while standing in his spotless bathroom, happy and carefree and so alive that it hurts-)_

 

 _Fuck_ those guys. They don’t know him. Who are they to judge him and his apartment and his _life?_ None of it is any of their business. Fuck them and their perfect lives and their perfect teeth.

 

He gathers the pile of clothes, dusty and dirty, from the corner next to the radiator, to clear the space, while concentrating on that anger. Yeah, anger will help him face them. He might be jobless, and he might be a mess, but he is going to stand straight when they come back and he is not going to stand any sneering or _jokes_ or comments they might make on his expense.

 

They will come back, and it’s not Bucky’s fault that he wasn’t prepared for them, _there was no fucking advance notice,_ if there had been he _would_ have cleaned in advance, but they will see that he did his fucking best to clear his messes and- and- and _fuck them and their privileged opinions._

 

(He can imagine it so well, so clearly- how they will laugh about him to all their friends during the lunch break, tell it like the horror story of the day, _‘Oh guess what, you know these disgusting pictures of apartments full of trash and moldy dishes? Yeah, we had to visit that kind of place today, god it was so horrible, that dude was such a loser, how can anyone live like that-’)_

 

Anger feels _so good._ He hasn’t been angry for so long. Anger fuels him, while he clears the rest of the paths to living room and kitchen radiators.

 

It’s 9:38, and he has done enough to ensure that the guys can get their jobs done.

 

Bucky stands in the middle of the living room, thinking what else he could still do.

 

Shower would be nice, but 1. His bathroom is full of trash that he just piled in there, and 2. What if he zones out in there, like he sometimes does, and the guys come back, and he doesn’t hear them ringing the bell, and then they come inside while he is in the shower, and agh he can’t deal with that thought, the thought of coming out of there to find them _already in his home-_

 

He could brush his hair and teeth, though. His hair feels greasy, but just greasy is better than greasy and tangled.

 

It takes some time to find the hair brush, but finally he fishes it from between the couch cushions. He has no patience to be gentle about it, so he goes to find his scissors as well to just cut off the first tangles. That way it doesn’t actually take too long.

 

Getting to bathroom sink to brush his teeth takes some parkouring over the trash bag pile in the bathroom, but he has got pretty good at navigating like that in his home.

 

As he brushes his teeth, his eyes land on the nail clippers, and he takes care of his nails as well. He washes his face. He contemplates on shaving, but decides not to. He would look absolutely ridiculous if they came back in the middle of shaving.

 

It’s 10:14, and Bucky finally sits down on his couch. The exhaustion is starting to settle back in, and he is ready to just fucking sit still and zone out until the guys come back.

 

Just as he has realized that he kind of needs to use the bathroom soon, and that it could grow to be a pretty serious problem (1. Bathroom _is_ still full of trash, and 2. What if the guys come back while he is on the toilet, oh god, his bathroom is next to the front door, what if he has to shout to them to wait and then they will stand there and listen and hear how is in the toilet-) and just as he is starting to try to talk himself through how _it’s not actually a big deal if couple of guys hear him flush a toilet, seriously, he can_ remember _not caring one whit about stuff like that before, why is he obsessing over it now, why is he going over it like it’s so big a deal-_

 

He hears the footsteps outside his front door, the heavy clangs of tool boxes as they are put on the floor, and his doorbell rings again.

 

_Let’s get this over with. Open the door, let them in, they’ll do their thing, then they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again. Plus, you’ll have working thermostats the next winter. In an hour, everything is back to normal again in this shithole, no matter what._

 

He steels himself, sets his jaw, checks his posture and opens the door.

 

“Hello again,” greets the black guy, with a smile that is not too wide or forced anymore.

 

The blond next to him is frowning instead of smiling, but also looking him in the eye while greeting him with, “Ready now?”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Hi. Come in.”

 

(Fuck, he forgot his shoes again- wait, no, he clipped his nails, it’s okay.)

 

He retreats to next to his couch, to stand out of their way.

 

How long will they be here? Fuck, why didn’t he plan better, is he going to sit down on the couch and stare at them while they work, no, that’s gonna be awkward- He used to just _know_ what to do- What do people usually do in these kind of situations, think think _think-_

 

The black guy goes into the kitchen while the blond guy stops by the table next to the living room radiator and looks at it consideringly.

 

“Is it on the way?” Bucky asks. He hadn’t thought so, it wasn’t blocking the way to the thermostat end of the radiator.

 

“I gotta get to that end of the radiator as well,” the blond guy says, his eyes flickering to meet Bucky’s.

 

It’s not a heavy table, but it’s topped with clutter.

 

“Sorry,” Bucky mutters and rushes to clear the top pile of the clutter - old bills, empty plates, oh wow an empty cereal container, he couldn’t even remember when he had eaten those -  so the table can be moved without everything crashing down.

 

The blond guy’s frown deepens. He opens his mouth like he is going to say something, but Bucky is happy when he instead snaps it shut and stays silent.

 

How should Bucky have _known_ that they needed access to the whole radiator, not just the thermostats? He _would_ have cleared the table and moved it away if he had known, to avoid this awkward silence and having to clean up while the guy was standing in his living room and watching him.

 

(He should have known that there was going to be a horribly awkward silence. He should have dusted off his radio and turned it on.)

 

There is still some clutter left on the table, just not in a way that was dangerously close to fall down, when Bucky takes a hold of the table to move it. The blond guy rushes in to help, and Bucky has to bite his lip to not snap at the guy to keep his hands off, that Bucky can handle it.

 

(The table is heavy, and Bucky hadn’t really exercised or practiced good nutrition for a while, so it is actually a good thing that the guy helps. Not that Bucky likes the fact.)

 

Bucky retreats back to his earlier spot next to the couch. He takes his phone out and realizes that he has no idea what to do with it. He is _not_ going to play Candy Crush while waiting. He starts to scroll through news, skimming the pictures, not able to focus on reading any of the articles.

 

Still, it’s marginally better than just standing there and staring at the guys.

 

“Alright, that’s it for now. We’ll come back later to put the new ones in,” says the black guy way, way sooner than Bucky would have expected them to be finished. At some point he has come out of the kitchen, and is standing in the middle of the living room, looking at Bucky. The blond guy stands up from beside the radiator.

 

Bucky nods, kind of overwhelmed. The guy is looking at him so _normally._ Still not sneering or expressing any disgust outwardly over anything, but also without any overt pity.

 

(There’s something very _kind_ in his expression and in his smile that smells like a tiny bit of pity, but that can be overlooked.)

 

(Actually, something in Bucky doesn’t want to overlook it. He doesn’t have that much of dignified pride. It feels good to have someone look at him in a way that suggests empathy, it has been awhile.)

 

(Maybe partly because he always avoids looking at anyone when he is out of his flat. But still.)

 

Eyes on Bucky’s _face,_ not straying to his dirty clothes nor to judgmentally stare at empty food containers on his floor, and-

 

Wait, what did the guy say.

 

No. No way.

 

_This was supposed to be over in one visit._

 

Well, at least Bucky learnt something after the first visit.

 

“When will you be back?” he asks, doing his best to channel _‘I’m a normal dude and I know how to be play human’_ and not _‘I honestly haven’t talked with another human being for so long, and I’m faking this so hard, please play along’._

 

He has to know. He is _not_ going to take a vague ‘later’ again, that’s just not acceptable, they can’t possible except him to be okay with that. He might look like a mess, but he is not going to let them treat him as inferior just because of that. He can _demand_ to know when some bloody strangers are going to come back to his _home,_ he is not going to let them vague their shit out of this-

 

“Around three, probably.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

The front door closes behind the guys.

 

It’s 10:49 AM, and Bucky has about four hours before the guys will invade his space again.

 

He flops on the couch. Fucking Mondays. It’s not even _noon,_ and he’s so _tired._

 

The mug with yesterday's coffee is on the floor, next to the couch, right where he left it in his haze earlier. Bucky steels himself, grabs it, and drinks the cold, disgusting coffee in three big, fast gulps.


End file.
